My favorite sage once told me "better look out" else you won't "see" :-) This is a wanderer's wanderlust !!, an attempt to navigate through the omnipresent urban blindness, albeit without any kind compass, and yet, inadvertently and magically, stumble upon the ever elusive truth.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

She spoke to me the other day and said, "remember once upon a time you would write me 10 lines in jiffy. 10 intensely personal lines, almost like a poem. Wonder where that ritual died?”, she asked wistfully.

I looked at her with a vacuous gaze and left it there. That night, as I was readying for sleep, my mind was wanting to hack away at a piece of paper. Here is what I wrote.

“Dearest C, there is a lot of things that I want to tell you, but here are the top 10 things on my mind. Here goes the #10 lines for today.

Ten. Yes, there are 10 fingers on me. On each of these fingers, I can count the number of things I have loved in this life. I started and stopped at 4. Could not proceed, What does that say about the unidimensional person that is me?

Nine. There are nine parts to desire. I have felt all nine of those, but I have experienced a lot lesser. Before this body could deal with the overload, it began winding down. In each of those 9 parts, there is a story of you and me that is decaying steadily I am not sorry for my half life. The beauty of a radioactive isotope is that it lives forever.

Eight. I was born on the 8th of the month, and my mom tells me, that Saturn governs my life. The angry Saturn, whose rings are light and fluffy, but causes mood swings that can unleash tornados. You were Jupiter. With my rings, and your size, we were like peacocks who are more involved in the ritual than the mating.

Seven. You and I were supposed to be bound for seven. I think someone forget to mention the time count. Was it seven births ? Seven eons? Seven millennia? Seven years? Seven months? Seven weeks? Seven days? Seven minutes? Or a simple poem told to the cadence of seven beats?

Six. There are six rivers in our land. In each of those six rivers, I see our story flowing in and merging into the larger continuum. When I partake a sip of the water, what I am gurgling is the shards of our own story. A part of us, that will live forever, flowing back and forth into these rivers.

Five. The five senses of mine, have numbed and died years ago. And yet, I can feel you in my soul. What do you call this, but the poetry of life. I rustle you through my hands, and smell your familiar whiff, peek into your soul, hear your echo in the corridor, and eat your spirit dripping through my cereals….all of this long after I am dead. Is this what Brahma prophesied as eternal damnation?

Four. Four times in my life you accused me of being a cheat. In each of those times, you killed a limb of mine. By the end of it, I was utterly paralyzed. I was a vegetable. How should I serve myself today? Sautéed? Grilled? Vindaloo curry? Raw with thousand island drip? Paleo style?

Three. Friends told me three times a charm. Third time lucky!! But you were not the third. You were the second. And you in your wisdom, assumed the third is the perceived interference. Thats where you missed the charm and the plot. There was no third one. My luck has run out. Inhaling Godot, I wait for the coming of the third apocalypse.

Two. It was supposed to take two to tango. But the two of us were far too heavy to tango. Weight control did not help. We carried the burden of unknown and imagined ghosts. There was always the heavy presence of someone else who intruded on our privacy. We were never a twosome. We were always too(two) much.

One. You had once asked me what would I miss the most if I could watch from the nether world. I would miss One. Which One? I would miss the One night of happiness that we always killed by the presence of what was absent. I would miss the One song that you promised to sing to me on my deathbed, but you completely forget about the deal. I would miss the One daughter that I never really had. I would miss the One slice of bread with my favorite marmalade. But most of all…I would miss happily miss this One life, and what could not have been possible, had you and I decided to stick as One.

"My kick the bucket" list

** 1. Scale Everest.** 2. Bike down to Leh3. Publish a work of fiction.** 4. Run a 42k Marathon.5. Do a 3 month Vipaasna course6. Motor down to Leh7. Visit the Golden Temple8. Watch a Roger Waters Concert9. Write a book of poems (not necessarily publish)

(** refers to items which the defeatist in me feels I shall never achieve.....)